


Stupid Thing Last Night: The Rewind

by clairza, elzed



Series: Stupid Thing Last Night: The Inadvertent Series [3]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Academy, F/M, voyerism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 22:49:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4239633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairza/pseuds/clairza, https://archiveofourown.org/users/elzed/pseuds/elzed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So," he asks slowly, “do you want to watch it?" </p>
<p>"Don't you?" she counters, and she knows he does, but he still feels he has to be the voice of reason.</p>
<p>"I think that would be a bad idea."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stupid Thing Last Night: The Rewind

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 10/3/09
> 
> A long long time ago in a galaxy far away I wrote a silly little fic called Stupid Thing Last Night. Much later (but still a long long time ago), I wrote another one: Stupid Thing Last Night: The Videotape edition. 
> 
> Then, a writer by the name of elzed contacted me with the idea of sequel-ing the ... sequel? And lo, our powers combined across timezone inconveniences and conflicting timetables, and we wrote a fic which is probably eight times as long as the first two combined. 
> 
> And here it is.

It takes Lee all of two seconds to go from wondering why the lights are off to recognizing Kara’s face on the screen. She looks so young, so beautiful, so utterly turned on – head thrown back against the wall, mouth half-open – that it makes him ache. 

It’s another second before he recognizes himself, and then it hits him like a punch to the solar plexus. Oh gods. It’s the tape. He senses Kara going rigid next to him, so she’s obviously figured it out too. Who the hell is here? He scans the shapes in the shadows, one of them frantically trying to turn the screen off and – finally, mercifully – succeeding. Hover, it looks like. The others – Hotdog, Racetrack, Boomer and a girl with a bushy ponytail that can only be Kat – are all frozen. 

Frak. Frakking frak.

Kara strides forward. “Okay. You've all had your fun. Out." 

Her tone brooks no argument, and even Kat goes no further than a feeble “But…” before shutting up.

“Out,” Kara repeats. “Or the CAG will make it an order.”

If the CAG can find his voice, that is, because Lee is pretty sure that he can’t speak at this point. He takes a couple of deep, quiet breaths, tries to find his focus, but all he can think about is Kara’s face, her mouth, gods.

The pilots get up slowly, taking their time, and Kat – who really doesn’t know when to leave well alone – is looking from Kara to him with naked curiosity. When Hover ejects the tape and reaches for it, though, instinct takes over.

"You can leave the tape," he snaps. "I'm feeling generous. Now go."

Miraculously, they follow suit and troop out of the ready room obediently, even if Meg is choking on repressed laughter and Hover stumbles before he slams the hatch shut. The sound echoes in the silence.

Now it’s just Kara and him, alone in the semi-darkness. Neither of them says a word for maybe a minute, which Lee could swear is a half-hour, so slowly do the seconds tick in the stillness. He is desperate to put the tape back in the player, to watch more of her, of this elusive, dreamlike Kara – open and vulnerable and wanting – captured in the scene that has haunted him for the past four years. 

It’s Kara who bends down and picks the tape up.

"Where did they get this thing?" she says, turning it between her fingers slowly. "It's Helo's writing. Oh lords, it must have been in his locker.”

Lee clears his throat. 

"He held onto it all this time?"

"Of course," she says, putting her cane down carefully and easing into one of the chairs. "That thing is worth its weight in gold. Wouldn't you have kept it?"

He nods, then shakes his head, and she laughs. 

“You know,” she says, “I wasn’t even sure this tape ever existed. I thought it was some kind of elaborate hoax he dreamed up to frak with us.”

“Me too.”

“And I just can’t believe that it survived the end of the world. That it survived him.” She says, her voice faltering at the end. 

“Yeah? I can’t believe a bunch of pilots found it.” 

She lets out another short bark of laughter. “Including a couple of my nuggets. That really sucks.”

"So," he asks slowly, “do you want to watch it?" 

"Don't you?" she counters, and she knows he does, but he still feels he has to be the voice of reason.

"I think that would be a bad idea." 

"Come on, Lee. We should at least watch the frakking thing once," she says, kicking her good foot up. Her eyes meet his as she delivers her killer argument. "Do you want those five knowing more about this than we do? I mean, Meg may not be so bad, but Sharon? And Hover?" 

Touché. 

"All right,” he says with a sigh. “Let's see the thing."

He works in some kind of smile as he says it, and he can’t quite believe he’s sounding so casual. Four years he’s waited to find out exactly what happened that night, beyond the intense half-remembered fragments that have starred in too many of his sexual fantasies to mention. 

Four frakking years, and it’s about to happen.

She catches his eye briefly, as if to confirm that he meant it, and for a second, she looks terrified. 

“You sure?”

He plucks the tape from her hands and pops it into the reader. There’s a faint whirring, and then the image that has been seared into his brain reappears on the screen, still paused, and Kara reaches for the remote and presses rewind. 

“Might as well watch the whole show, right?”

“I just want it said," he mutters as the tape spins noisily in the deck, "that I think this is a really bad idea." 

Kara shrugs. 

“All I can say is we must’ve been crazy drunk.”

He nods his agreement. Sure. Except that he would have done it stone cold sober, and Kara wouldn’t – couldn’t – remember anything at all about the single sexiest memory of his life. It crucified him that the only time she’d let her guard down enough to let him in, it had been the booze and not her, not really. That much was clear from the moment he’d finally answered the phone the morning after – on the twelfth ring – knowing he’d have to face her again, eventually.

“So, who do you think actually taped this?” he asks, as the recording whines to is starting position and starts to unspool.

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” she says, offhand. “Oh, look, it’s the Pen.” 

It’s their senior year haunt, packed with Academy pilots out on a tear. The air is thick with smoke, there’s bass thumping in the background and the camera mic catches snippets of drunken conversations and raucous laughter. Lee realizes with a start that he recognizes most faces, even if he can’t put a name to all of them.

“Hey,” he says, “isn’t that Dora, who used to date Helo? And that guy, in the corner, what was his name, the math whizz…?”

“Clayton,” Kara says. “And Spinner, behind him, remember him?”

“How could I forget Spinner? I thought he was going to shoot me when I made valedictorian ahead of him. I wonder what happ– ” He stops abruptly.

Next to him, Kara winces. “I was thinking the same thing, just now. And then it hit me. It’s crazy how easy it is…” her voice trails off. 

There were maybe two hundred people in the bar that night, give or take, maybe more, most of them Academy pilots they knew, at least by sight. Every single damn one of them is dead now, except for Kara and himself, and their only surviving record is a crappy tape of them getting drunk on a Saturday night. It’s enough to make Lee wish for a stiff drink or three here and now, but he can’t tear himself away from the tape, because a familiar figure is now striding towards the camera – cocky and confident and so damn young – some rook trailing her with puppy dog eyes. 

"Oh my gods, I'd completely forgotten Wells. Poor thing."

"He looks like he's fifteen." He sends her a brief sideways smirk. "I didn't know you liked them so young."

She snorts. "Please, Apollo. I didn't want to frak him, just… make him my slave."

"Ah yes," Lee stretches and puts his hands behind his head. "uou were always kind of a bitch, Kara." 

"You have to start early in order to reach maximum potential. You told me that before our first exams."

"Which you failed."

"Just. And I whipped your ass in sims."

"Just."

"That's where it counts."

He rolls his eyes. "Focus, Kara."

She sticks her tongue out at him.

“Tex,” she says when a disembodied voice issues from behind the camera. “Frakking Tex, and he was filming it for Mike, remember?”

He does.

Onscreen, Kara’s cutting in on him and some blonde with too much eyeliner and bright red lipstick, and Lee cringes. 

“Hey, look, Lee – you’re being the damsel in distress, as usual.”

“Not my fault they couldn’t keep their hands off me,” he says, but all he can see on screen is how he and Kara are reacting to each other, and how it must have looked to outside observers. Gods, he never realized they behaved so much like a couple. No wonder other people got so pissed. 

"So who did I rescue you from this time? Mary. No, Mandy. Dorm 4 for easy access." 

"Her name was Amanda."

Kara shrugs. "You might have called her Amanda, but the rest of us called her Mandy the… "

"You know," Lee says abruptly, his tone brooking no argument, "I think some things are better left forgotten."

She laughs, and bumps his arm with hers. "Still traumatized?"

"Shut up, Kara."

"You know, you should let your hair grow back like that. I liked it." 

"Will you be quiet, please?"

They watch for a moment in companionable silence, until an unimpressed female voice on the tape breaks in over the background music, and Kara laughs. 

"Elise! Oh, I'd forgotten all about her."

"Wasn't she that brunette…"

"That had a totally desperate crush on you? Yeah. That'd be her."

"She did not. You're imagining things."

"She totally did. Gods, Apollo, what she would have done to get you in bed – I remember once Sharon telling me that… " 

"Okay, Kara, I get the idea. You don't need to go any further." 

"Apollo, Apollo. Was there a girl that didn't want you?"

He gives her a quick look and she shuts up. This is getting a little close for comfort. 

The next hour is one long nostalgia fest, starring most of the people in their graduating class, hotshot jocks, friends, the occasional frakbuddy – until suddenly the camera zooms onto a lanky guy walking in and they both catch their breath. 

“Helo, you son of a bitch,” Kara whispers as their friend swaggers across the screen towards Tex and the camera. “Hey look, it’s us again.” 

"Oh my gods. Look how drunk we were,” Lee says, leaning forward. "Wow. What did we drink to end up like that? In what, an hour?" 

"Firebrand whisky?"

"Oh. Yeah. Hey. Yeah. I think I vaguely remember that."

Onscreen, they’re clutching onto each other to keep their balance, and it looks like Lee’s resting heavily on Kara’s shoulder. 

Here in the room next to him, she cackles. "Look at you, you lightweight." 

“You know, I’m beginning to wonder this was all just spur of the moment,” Lee says suddenly. There’s something a little too smooth about Helo’s patter, and Tex is playing along, focusing on the two of them to the exclusion of everyone else.

“Nah,” Kara says, but she doesn’t sound convinced as she watches the action unfold, each taunt leading inevitably to the next, their younger selves moving closer and closer into each other’s space. 

“Frakking bastards set us up,” Lee insists, and it’s so obvious onscreen that Helo’s egging them on that Lee can’t believe they went for it. “Look at him – he knows exactly which buttons to push. Frak, I bet he made sure we were good and drunk, too.”

“Oh, like that was much of a challenge?” Kara scoffs, but her eyes are narrowed in suspicion.

The on-screen tension is starting to get to Lee, and although he’s already seen what’s going to happen, he’s dry-mouthed with anticipation. 

“Frak me, Apollo! Two hundred and sixty-three cubits?” 

Lee can feel his jaw drop, the expression mimicking that of his younger self on camera. 

“They can’t be serious.”

“Gods, Lee, you must have been completely gone – you didn’t even correct Helo’s shoddy math.”

Lee, then and now, doesn’t give a frak about Helo’s math, because all his focus is on Kara’s mouth, and if the real Kara in the real here and now can’t tell how desperate he was to kiss her back then, then she’s blind.

When their lips meet on the screen in front of them, Lee has to dig his nails into his palms to stop himself from whimpering. Gratifyingly, he hears Kara breathe out very slowly, and he figures maybe she’s not quite as unaffected by all this as she’s pretending to be. 

Onscreen, the Apollo and Starbuck show is heating up something fierce – he’s got her pinned against the wall, one of her legs hooked around his waist – and Lee cannot believe how into it they both were. This wasn’t just his imagination then; in front of his very eyes, Kara is returning his kiss passionately, and it’s so intense he feels his older, purportedly wiser self harden. 

“Apollo, did you spike my drink?” Kara asks, another reminder of the here and now, trying to sound unconcerned and failing. He sneaks a look over at her. Her chest is rising and falling faster than it ought to and even in the dim light he can see two spots of color on her cheeks. 

He snorts, because he doesn’t trust his voice. 

On screen, they’re dry humping against the wall, and it’s as close to porn as anything he’s ever seen, except it’s better – because it’s Kara – and it’s worse – because there are dozens of onlookers, not to mention the handful of Galactica pilots who watched the tape.

Lee decides this is simultaneously the most embarrassing and arousing experience of his life, and for some twisted reason, he’s forcing himself to live through it twice. 

“Frak, Lee, please tell me someone stopped us,” Kara hisses, and she reaches out for him blindly, her nails digging into the sleeve of his uniform. He steels himself not to react to her touch. 

They’ve reached the point in the tape now at which they first walked in on the impromptu viewing party – Apollo’s hand halfway up Starbuck’s tank, his mouth on her neck, her legs around his waist, her head flung back against the wall. 

Half of Lee’s attention is now focused on keeping his erection in check; but the other wilder half of his brain is fighting his natural impulse, which is to grab Kara and re-enact the scene in front of them in real time.

On the video, she lets out a strangled moan and bucks her hips into his, and Lee watches himself thrust back in response, baring his teeth against the skin of her shoulder. 

Kara’s fingers tighten around his forearm.

It’s as if they’re suspended in time and space, glued to the screen but unable to move or speak, unwilling to break the spell keeping them here, and desire hangs thick in the air. 

With an immense effort of will he tears his eyes away from their conjoined forms and focuses instead on the crowd in the bar. Even on the fuzzy screen, he can see that they’re all mesmerized – pupils wide in flushed faces – and gods, he can’t believe they’d put on a floor show to rival the strippers at the Vixen Club over the road. By rights he should be cowed by shame, but there’s something about the look on the younger Kara’s face that fills him with pride instead. 

Still, he’s thankful when the burly shape of Alvin, the Pen’s bouncer, marches across the frame and glances menacingly at Tex before ordering them to cut the crap, or else. 

The last thing Lee sees before the video on screen abruptly turns off – following the orders of a ghost – is the look of shock and disbelief on both their faces when Alvin breaks them up. That, and how swollen Kara’s lips were with his kisses. 

The screen dissolves in a blur of dots and white noise, and Kara doesn’t let go of his arm. He risks a look at her and she’s looking back, lips parted, cheeks flaming, eyes dark and hungry. It’s only a moment, and when he blinks she’s turned away from him, her hand dropping from his arm. 

He’s trying to figure out what to do when the intercom crackles to life with Lieutenant Gaeta’s voice.

“Attention, pass the word to the CAG. Captain Adama please report to CIC. Repeat, Captain Adama report to CIC.”

“Frak,” he swears under his breath, but orders are given to be followed, so he does. He turns back as he gets to the hatch and Kara hasn’t moved, still staring at the fuzzy screen, resolutely ignoring him. There’s nothing he could say that wouldn’t make the moment ever more awkward than it is already, so he steps through the hatch and walks down the corridor, his mind a whirl of emotions and images.

It occurs to him as he nears CIC he’d better get some good blackmail material on Hover, Racetrack and the others, or he might have to shoot them. 

********************************

The hatch clangs shut behind him, and Kara sinks down in her seat and exhales. 

Frak. 

Her body feels hot, and she knows her pulse is racing. She hasn’t been this turned on since she can remember. Her lips feel swollen, her skin burning in all the places he touched her as if it had been real even now, and Kara drops her head into her hands and tries to think.

She’d forgotten – to all intents and purposes – that the tape even existed. Sure, it had made life at the Academy a little awkward for a week or so, but she was Starbuck and she’d made sure she’d gone out and done something even crazier the next weekend. When it was clear there were going to be no more repeat performances with Apollo, the kiss had passed into Academy folklore – talked about and exaggerated until it became almost unreal. 

Now, however, she sees exactly what all the fuss had been about, and there is no memory whatsoever of the whole thing in her mind, which seems frakking unbelievable. 

There’s a sudden loud click as onscreen an image emerges, different from the club before. It takes her a moment to work out what’s happening before she recognizes the street. It’s the main thoroughfare back to the Academy, and she sees Dozer, Flipper and another cadet whose name she can’t quite remember in the shadows as well. 

There’s laughter, and just enough light from the streetlamps to illuminate the faces of her old classmates, and she leans forward in her seat as Helo crosses the screen. 

“Holy frak,” Tex says from behind the camera. Helo is practically bent over laughing, even as he’s walking. “Did you see that? Gods, I thought they were going to frak right there.”

“I can’t believe it,” Flipper says, from where she‘s walking hand in hand with Dozer. “I just can’t believe it.” 

“I can.” 

Helo’s walking backwards so he can face Tex. 

“They’ve wanted to do that since first year,” he continues.

“Oh, I can believe that,” Flipper answers. “I just can’t believe they finally did something about it.”

Someone laughs offscreen. “Did you see Apollo’s face?”

“Did you see Starbuck’s?” 

“They wanted each other so bad.” 

“Well, that’s been obvious all semester.”

“All year!”

“Since they met!” 

“Except to them,” Helo puts in dryly. 

“Except to Starbuck. Apollo, on the other hand…” 

“Yeah, but he was never going to do anything about it.” 

“You saw the way he looked at her? He only gets like that when he’s wasted.”

“Like she was something to eat.”

“Okay, way too much mental imagery,” Flipper says. “What I saw in the bar was enough, okay, boys? Enough. I’m not going to sleep as it is.”

Kara sinks a little into her seat as the laughter of ghosts echoes through the room. She can feel her face burning with embarrassment and her heart hammering and she’s so glad Lee left already because this is almost too much. Onscreen, Dozer is still looking stunned. 

“Wow.”

“Starbuck and Apollo.”

“Finally.”

“I know, right?” 

“You guys are living gods.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Tex says from behind the camera, as Helo bows with a flourish.

“Are you guys done yet?” A familiar voice cuts over the mix, and Tex turns to face Elise, and Kara almost laughs at the look on the girl’s face. “I mean, I know this has all been very funny, and whatever, but – “ 

“Aw, Elise, don’t worry,” Helo says, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “They’re just meant to be together.”

“Epic love and all that,” Flipper adds. 

“More like epic sexual tension,” Tex drawls from behind the camera, and Helo snorts with laughter.

“Next time, we need to pay off Alvin,” he says, and Elise slaps his arm. “There were at least another few minutes of priceless footage there.” 

“Yeah, the one thing we didn’t think about in our foolproof plan.”

Helo grins. “Mike,” he says seriously, looking into the camera, “You owe us big time.”

“As does the world,” Tex says extravagantly from behind the camera. 

“Stay tuned for next week’s episode on Academy Pilots: The Apollo and Starbuck show,” Helo intones , and she hears all the pilots laugh for a second before the screen goes black for three seconds before the options menu reappears. 

Kara hesitates a moment, then hits rewind, and skips back through the kissing – gods, the kissing – to the moment just before. After the dark of the street scene, the sound and lights of even the dimly-lit bar are blinding. Kara blinks, and when she focuses again, all she can see is Lee.

“You sound like you’re scared,” he’s saying, but there’s something in the way that he’s looking at her on the tape that makes Kara shifts in her seat as much as her knee will let her. “One hundred and thirty cubits.” His gaze is on Kara’s mouth now – focused on it with a laser precision.

“Fine. But I get the cubit left over,” says her counterpart onscreen. 

“Shut up, Kara,” Lee answers her, and Kara hits pause on the tape. The frame freezes, and Kara looks at the expression on her own face as Lee leaned into her, the want and anticipation so naked on her face, her fingers tight against the fabric of his tanks. It’s painfully clear how much she wanted him, and Kara fumbles at the remote and hits eject before she can see anymore. 

The tape pops out of the player, and the screen goes blue. 

She scrubs a hand through her hair, and wishes she could deny everything but the evidence of how much she wanted Lee Adama was there all over her face, just as it is now in how she’s flushed, her skin prickling all over and aching for something she actually had four years ago, and can’t remember at all. 

Frak.

************************** 

The few minutes it takes him to walk through the ship are nowhere near enough for Lee to recover his composure, but he does manage to will his dick back into some sort of decent state before he has to face his father. 

His mind, on the other hand, is a complete whirl. Focus, Lee, he thinks savagely as he steps into CIC, where his father and the XO are leaning over star charts spread on the display table. 

“Captain Adama reporting to CIC, sir” he says, snapping a salute, hoping he doesn’t look too flushed or disheveled. 

His father beckons him over and starts talking about the need for organizing regular surveys to find supplies before they run out rather than after, and could he work this into his CAP rotations? Lee nods dumbly, because he’s sure he will be able to manage that. Eventually. When his head isn’t frakked with visions of his younger self, desperate and hungry; of Kara’s parted lips; of his hands on her skin; of the way she mouthed his name... 

If that ever happens.

“I want a draft of the new rosters on my desk by tomorrow, Apollo,” Tigh growls. “This is something we should’ve organized a while ago.”

“It’ll be there, sir. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better go and start on it, if that’s all you wanted to tell me. Commander?”

“Dismissed,” his father says. “Goodnight, Lee.”

Reworking the rosters is a nightmare, but preferable to trying to go to sleep, Lee decides as he slaves in his office over grids with too many slots and not enough pilots to fill them. It’s also the perfect opportunity to make sure that people are kept apart – like Kara and himself, especially since she isn’t flying CAPs at the moment. It limits his options, but he manages to work Hover and Racetrack, and Sharon in quite often, and to give the nuggets a punishing training schedule that will minimize their chances of spreading gossip. 

Of course, it’s probably too late. 

Eventually, he’s done as much as he can and the grid looks useable. It’s just as well since he’s so tired he can barely read it anymore, and he can’t postpone going to bed any longer.

The bunkroom is quiet. By the sound of it most of the pilots are asleep, or near enough. Kara’s curtain is drawn across, thank the gods, and there’s no light peeking out from either Hover’s or Racetrack’s bunka. Lee strips quietly and efficiently before climbing into his rack, and it feels so good to lie down that – for a short while – he fools himself into thinking that he’s immediately going to fall asleep.

No such luck, of course, because while his body is dog-tired, his brain is still revisiting the highlights of that frakking tape, which in turn stimulates his body back into a state of arousal that he can’t seem to shake off. 

If he wasn’t so exhausted, he’d take himself to the showers for a quick resolution of this state of affairs, but that’s not likely to happen. Especially when he hears a sigh coming from the other side of his curtain, a sigh that he’s willing to bet is Kara’s. All he needs is for her to catch him on his way to the head with an obvious hard-on and… he shudders to think.

If it is indeed Kara, she’s not getting any more sleep than he is. Lee can hear restless shuffling in the rack across from his, which leads him naturally to imagining Kara in bed in her underwear, which does nothing for his problem. Maybe he’s going to have to deal with it here and now – not, in itself, anything unusual, but with enormous embarrassment potential if she hears him. 

Then again, Lee’s lived long enough in shared bunkrooms to learn how to bring himself off discreetly. 

Eyes closed, he takes himself in hand, and he doesn’t need to summon any memories because they’re already imprinted on his brain. He’s back in the Pen – dry-humping her against the wall, his erection pressing into her – and she’s moaning softly in his ear, arching against the wall to increase the pressure, her legs wrapped around his waist. He’s so hard he’s leaking – in record time, but he’s been trying to keep it down for too long, now – and strokes himself as slowly as he can, to avoid detection. 

Silence is paramount – and the most difficult part of it all is trying to control his breathing, but that’s where extreme fitness has its advantages. All the time, he’s straining to hear any noises coming from her side, anything that indicates that she’s awake, and could be listening. Which is why he catches her gasp – quiet but definitely real – and the sharp intake of breath that follows.

Frak. 

She can’t be.

He’s suddenly exponentially harder than he was a second ago, because superimposed on his memory of Kara against the wall, there now is an even more arousing fantasy of Kara lying in her rack, a couple of meters away, hand down her pants, caressing herself to ecstasy. He can see her so clearly in his mind’s eye, tanks and bra discarded, one hand touching her breast, the other busy between her legs – back arched, mouth half-open – Gods.

That tips him over the edge and he comes onto his stomach in a pure spasm of unadulterated pleasure, managing with superhuman effort not to groan as he does. His heartbeat is suddenly so loud to his ears he worries Kara can hear it, even though he knows it’s not possible. Grabbing a towel at the foot of his bunk, he wipes himself off before collapsing back onto his pillow, the exhaustion catching up with him. Kara is quiet on her side of the room, but he can’t erase the thought that he caught her pleasuring herself.

Even if it’s not true, it’s a compelling enough thought to make him fall asleep with a smile on his face, despite the clusterfrak that was his early evening. Tomorrow, he’ll deal with it. Tomorrow. 

 

*****************************

 

The next morning she wakes up hot and slick and sweaty and she has no idea if her dream was fragments of memory coming back to her, or simply her imagination running in overdrive. Her knee is aching like a bitch, and – from the lack of sound outside her curtain – there's no one left in the bunkroom. Ordinarily, she’d revel in a few moments of privacy to pull herself together, but with her knee in the clumsy brace, Kara can barely lean over, let alone reach her feet, which means it's impossible to change by herself. 

It's humiliating, just like dreaming about Lee; Starbuck's many things, but needy isn't one of them. Kara shoves the curtain back, determined to at least change her tanks by herself. 

However, the bunkroom isn't empty after all, and the person left makes her want to draw her curtain again and sink back into the darkness. 

"Good morning, Starbuck," Hover says, stretching out in his rack, and she wonders if he was waiting there just to check how many people were lying behind her curtain. 

She acknowledges him with a nod, too frustrated with everything to be more than barely polite, and begins the process of maneuvering her leg out of her bunk. Hover doesn't take the hint.

"I'm surprised to see you here," he says conversationally. "Sleep well?"

"Oh, frak off," she snarls, and tries to stand. This proves to be a mistake, as the vague throbbing ache disappears under a stabbing wave of pain. She gasps and reaches out for the ladder, eyes watering at the shock of it, and the next second Hover's next to her, one hand on her waist and the other on her shoulder, supporting her until she finds an upright position that reduces the pain from agony to something just bearable.

"Okay?" he says after a moment, and she wants to stay mad at him but he's looking at her with genuine concern. Stupid frakking pilot loyalty.

"Painkillers," she gets out, and places both hands on the table, leaning her weight on it until Hover comes back with two of Doc Cottle's magic pills and her water bottle. 

"I'll get Sharon for you," he says, and disappears while she's swallowing them down. 

Sharon must not have been far away, because she appears at the hatch before Kara's even taken one step towards her locker. 

"Kara?" 

"I'm okay," Kara replies swiftly. "Just sore."

"What do you need?"

"I need to change," she says reluctantly, and Sharon crosses to her locker, coming back with her arms full of running shorts, new tanks, shoes and socks. 

They slip into the routine they've formed over the last week – Kara changing her top half with Sharon covering all the things that would take impractical amounts of time if Kara was left to dress by herself. Kara pulls on a fresh sports bra, not bothering to fill the silence with idle talk because she knows what's coming – it's impossible to keep Sharon quiet on any sort of gossip, let alone something of this magnitude. 

And Sharon doesn't disappoint. "So. You look tired," she says finally, as she tugs a clean pair of running shorts carefully up over the brace on Kara's knee. 

"Sharon... " 

"And I'm not surprised." 

Kara groans, pulling her tanks over her head. "No – nothing…"

"Yeah, I know," Sharon cuts in cheerfully, reaching for Kara's shoes and socks.

"What do you mean, you know?"

"Please," Sharon says, as she carefully slides shoe onto Kara's foot without jolting her bad knee. "That would be the biggest gossip Galactica has ever seen and therefore all over the ship by now. And somebody would have a lot of socks. Well, in post-apocalyptic terms, anyway."

"Socks?" 

Sharon's eyes sparkle, and Kara knows that look too well. 

"Okay, I'm not asking."

"Good move." Sharon's smile widens. "So…. Lee Adama."

"Sharon, it was nothing. I don't even remember it. "

Sharon rolls her eyes, tying the final shoelaces in a neat bow. "If that was nothing, then I'm a Cylon."

"Nothing has happened!"

"Sure." Sharon gets up. "Yet. Well, aren't you going to say thank you?"

"Thank you," Kara says grudgingly, biting back numerous other choice retorts, because now is really not the time to be pushing boundaries.

"You're welcome. Can you get to the mess by yourself?"

"Yeah. I'll see you at the briefing."

"See you then." Sharon pauses at the hatch. "You will tell me, this time," she says, and it's not so much a request as an order. 

***

The day degenerates from there. She stumbles through her part of a briefing, too aware of Kat's fiendish smile, Hover's smirk and the way Hotdog is carefully looking directly past her left ear. She's even more aware of Lee, which annoys her. She hasn't spent seven years learning how to ignore the buzz when he's near to have all that progress thrown away on a drunken misdemeanor that happened before Kat and Hotdog were out of high school. One she can't even remember. 

She glances at Lee, who – predictably enough – is looking at her, and promptly loses her sentence halfway between 'CAP Rotation 5' and the pilots on it, and has to look down at her notes to collect herself and press on. She can tell, even without looking at Sharon, that her friend is wearing a grin the size of Io's udder and that only annoys her further.

She gets through the rest of the report without incident, mostly because she keeps her gaze on her notes, the board or the bottom of Stingray's boots, which he's kicked them up over the back of the chair in front of him. 

When Lee gets up to finish the briefing – for the first time since the world ended – she pulls out a pen and takes notes, anything to give herself something to do that isn't looking at him or imagining. She tries to ignore the way Sharon's stifling giggles behind her for the rest of the briefing.

 

****************************

Ever since he walked into the ready room, Lee has been a bundle of nerves. So far, his morning has been relatively easy – he had breakfast before everybody, after waking up abruptly with a sinking feeling in his belly, and the realization that it wasn’t all a dream. The past couple of hours have been spent with Tigh and the Commander in CIC, working through the new rosters and discussing recon patrols with Gaeta. 

Now he’s in a roomful of pilots – including Kara – and he doesn’t even know whether they all know about the godsdamned tape, or whether he’s just got a handful to worry about. A handful is bad enough, especially with that bunch. He’s already caught Hover smirking at him from three seats down, and he’s bracing himself for when Kara finishes her report and he has to face the crowd. He’s staring at her, so when she looks straight at him he sees her lose the thread of whatever she was talking about (which he should be listening to, but isn’t), and immediately makes a mental note not to look at her once he takes over at the podium. 

It starts out easy enough, and the new survey runs that are being introduced involve a fair amount of clarification, which keeps his mind busy. He does, however, look at the assembled pilots a couple of times, and each time Hover is grinning, and Sharon is whispering something in Racetrack’s ear. He avoids searching out Kara, because he knows his limits, but he sees her scribbling something out of the corner of his eye and she never takes notes in briefings. 

“Okay – that’s the basic outline. Any questions?” 

And then the trouble begins. There are a couple of innocuous questions about duty rosters, and overstretching, which he dispatches swiftly.

Sharon raises a hand. “Sir, this doesn’t leave many Raptors free for emergencies. What if we need to engage in, say, a rescue mission?” 

Her eyes are sparkling, and next to her, Racetrack is trying not to laugh, and failing. 

Here we go. 

“I’m sure we could have some Raptors on standby for that purpose, Boomer. You want to volunteer for being on-call between CAPs? I’ll put you down.” He flourishes his pen. “Next!”

Next is, of course, Hover.

“How are the search patterns going to be set out sir? Will it be random? Every hundredth rock, or every hundred and fiftieth, or every… two hundred and sixty third, say?”

Lee can feel the blush creeping up his face.

“I don’t know, Hover – Lieutenant Gaeta will be plotting the jumps. If you’ve got suggestions and you want to discuss them with him, go right ahead.”

“Whatever you deem appropriate, sir,” Hover says with a genial smile, and Lee sees Hotdog shaking his head in awe. This has got to be nipped in the bud.

“This briefing is over. Dismissed.”

As the pilots walk out, Lee makes a beeline for Hover, who’s obviously been expecting him because he unfolds slowly from his seat, taking advantage of their height difference, which annoys Lee further. The guy is second only to Starbuck in his willingness to challenge authority, something Lee has become well acquainted with in the past weeks. 

“Sir?” He still has that infuriating smirk playing on his lips, and Lee’s fist itches. 

“I know it’s not jump calc, but I need someone to organize maintenance shifts, and you seem willing to help out,” he says, pasting as large a smile as he can muster on his face. He knows Hover isn’t fooled, but he has to play the game. 

“Sir, yes sir.”

“So if you swing by the office after lunch, I’ll hand you over some paperwork. Thank you for your support, Lieutenant.”

“Sure thing, sir,” Hover says – but there’s something a little forced about his grin, and Lee knows he’s scored a hit. Later, when he offloads a month’s worth of maintenance planning, he congratulates himself on his strategy. 

“I’m sure it won’t take you more than a couple of hours to deal with it, Lieutenant,” he says lightly as Hover walks off with a bulging file. He’s lying through his teeth, because if Hover can get it done in a few days, around CAPs, he’s a better planner than Lee gives him credit for.

Revenge is sweet.

Lee flies a routine CAP in the afternoon, relishing the hours spent on his own, without anyone snickering in his direction, and without having to compute where Kara might be at any given time. He’s rostered Hotdog with him, because he knows that the kid won’t try anything while flying with the CAG. 

Now and then Lee barks some complex maneuver over the ship to ship channel, under the pretence of taking Hotdog through his paces, and critiques his technique extensively. If Hotdog’s nervous replies are any indication, there shouldn’t be any challenge to Lee’s authority from his corner after CAP. That nugget is cowed.

In between bouts of torturing Hotdog, Lee also finds himself dwelling – again – on the damn tape, and on the extent of his public humiliation. He is, in fact, amazed that he didn’t get more of a ribbing from his fellow cadets in the days following the event, because all he could see there was how utterly desperate he was to kiss her, touch her, at any cost. 

He runs into Kat in the showers and she blushes when she sees him exiting a stall with a towel around his waist. He ignores her, but after he catches her sneaking looks at him in the mirror, he beckons her.

“No staring in the showers, nugget,” he says curtly. “It’s basic battlestar etiquette.”

Someone snorts in one of the cubicles and Kat turns beet red and all but runs out of the head, muttering apologies, which makes Lee feel better, if a little shabby. 

His strategy must be working, though, because everyone gives him a wide berth at the mess, and he actually manages to get some work done while eating dinner. 

There’s a triad game in progress when he hits the rec room, and while he knows neither Hover nor Kara will be there – she’s on the nightshift today, not entirely by design, but it works for him; and Hover probably won’t have any free time for the next week – he still braces himself for unwelcome comments. As it happens, everyone pretty much ignores him, even Racetrack whose head remains resolutely bowed over her cards. It probably won’t last, but for now, it’s good enough. 

He sleeps much better that night – probably because Kara’s not in the room to distract him; not to mention he’s absolutely exhausted – and manages to wake up after most of the other pilots. He’s stretched out on his rack, enjoying a rare moment of solitude when the hatch crashes open and Kara hobbles in, swearing.

“Good morning to you too,” he says, still too relaxed by his orgy of sleep to feel tense.

“The only good thing about this morning is that it’s the end of my watch,” Kara bites off. “And by the way? Thanks for putting me on nights. Subtle.”

“Believe me, it was by accident more than anything else.”

“Bullshit,” she mutters, but low enough that he can pretend he hasn’t heard her. 

He lays his head back and closes his eyes as she starts unbuttoning her uniform jacket. No need to ramp up the sexual tension. She’s obviously come to the same conclusion, because she tries – awkwardly – to strike up a conversation as she undresses, slowly.

“So, I hear you’ve turned into Captain Hardass?”

He grins.

“Who told you?”

“Scuttlebutt says the nuggets are running scared, and that Apollo is – and I’m quoting Cally – on the warpath.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Lee say, eyes still closed. “Any mention of why?”

“Not in my hearing. Oh, frak!”

He hears something slamming into a locker, swiftly followed by a groan of pain, which has him out of his rack and by her side in an instant.

“Hey, are you all right? You don’t look so good.”

“It’s nothing,” Kara huffs, but she’s very pale and there’s sweat beading on her upper lip. 

“Painkillers?”

She shakes her head. 

“No, I’ll be okay. But…” she tails off, and if Lee didn’t know her better, he’d swear she was embarrassed.

“What?”

“Well, okay. Normally Sharon helps me, but since you’ve been altering the rosters, I guess she’s flying now.”

“Helps you?”

She’s leaning against the door of her locker, grimacing, and gestures vaguely towards her knee.

Oh.

“I can help,” Lee says, and she snorts. “Or I can get someone else…”

“I just want to get into bed, Lee,” she sighs. “Now. Can you just help me with my shoes and…”

“Sure.”

He kneels down at her feet and unties her shoes quickly, removing one, then the other, peeling off her socks while trying to keep the actual touching of her bare skin to a minimum. She’s unbuttoned her shorts and hooked two fingers in the waistband, and he tugs on them and slides them down her legs, deliberately not looking at her ass, or the top of her thighs, despite a compelling desire to do so. The knee brace takes a little maneuvering, and the sight of her bandaged, swollen leg reminds him – yet again – how close he was to losing her, how thankful he is to have her back after those desperate hours searching, that awful moment when they gave up the search, gave up on her.

Impulsively, he grabs her ankles and squeezes.

“It’s good to have you back, Starbuck, even if you are a walking casualty,” he says, grinning, and he looks up at her.

There are two bright spots on her cheeks and she’s shaking slightly, but he can’t tell if it’s pain or something else. The way she avoids his eyes makes him think it’s more about their close quarters than anything else, though, so of course he starts feeling terribly awkward.

“Apollo, you do know how to compliment a lady,” she says with an uneasy chuckle. 

“There’s a lady here?” he says, automatically, eyebrows rising, and she laughs more sincerely.

“If I wasn’t a cripple, I’d make you pay for that,” she says with a shove. 

“If you weren’t a cripple, I wouldn’t be kneeling at your feet in the first place.”

 

*****************************

Kara wonders briefly at the gods and their twisted sense of humor; she has Lee Adama on his knees before her, undressing her, and all she can think of is how to get herself out of this situation as quickly as possible. She can't quite believe she can be both embarrassed and turned on at the same time, but she is, and horribly so. To make matters worse, Lee seems to be dealing with it all just fine – taking her shoes and socks off methodically, tucking them in her locker in the kind of anal-retentive neatness that she always teases him for. 

He then turns his attention to her shorts, and Kara curls one hand around the top of the chair and holds on, because even the slight touches along her legs are enough to bring her body shockingly awake.

Not fair, she thinks, searching for something innocuous to say, but he beats her to it, his hands gripping her ankles. 

"It's good to have you back, Starbuck, even if you are a walking casualty."

He sounds warm, sincere, like the Lee she's missed for the last two days, ever since the tape turned them abruptly into something just more than friends. Against her better judgment, she looks down at him – his eyes are so blue and his hair is sleep-mussed and tousled, and for a moment he looks impossibly young. She wants to run her fingers through his hair. She wants him to keep smiling at her like that – like she's the most important thing in his world. She wants to sink down onto the floor with him and press her mouth to his. 

After a moment, she looks away and reaches for something to say. "Apollo, you do know how to compliment a lady."

"There's a lady here?" he retorts, and it surprises a laugh out of her. 

"If I wasn't a cripple, I'd make you pay for that," she tells him, slugging his shoulder with the hand she doesn't need for balance. 

He grins. "If you weren't a cripple, I wouldn't be kneeling at your feet in the first place."

"Such a shame, too," she retorts without thinking. It's what Starbuck would have said two days ago, with an accompanying smirk, and she would have enjoyed Lee's blush and endearing stammer, but now – now his hands are still on her ankles, thumbs dragging against her skin, and her mind is supplying her with a whole list of things he could be doing, and Lee's flushing, all the way up to his cheekbones. 

He coughs, and reaches into her locker for a fresh pair of shorts. She busies herself pulling a fresh set of tanks over her head – another bra can wait until after she's slept, she's not going to stand in front of him any more naked than she already is – and then Lee's carefully sliding her shorts up her legs, over the brace. It's easy to tell he's trying not to touch her but it's impossible to dress someone without skin meeting skin occasionally. She bites her lip as his fingers touch her thighs, skim across the curve of her ass, over her hipbones. She lasts right up until his thumbs slide briefly across her stomach, and then her whole lower body is liquid heat and she wants him.

"I've got it from here," she says abruptly, and he drops his hands like she's burned him. Which – she thinks fleetingly – is pretty ironic, given it feels like he burned her.

"Okay," Lee says after a moment, stepping back, and now there is distance in between them again – not just physical, either – and she wishes she'd just kept her mouth shut.

"Thanks for helping," she tries, trying to inject some warmth into her voice. "Really."

"You're saying thank you?" he says, feigning shock. "What happened to Starbuck?"

She rolls her eyes. "You need some new material, Apollo," she tells him, and shuffles past him, sitting down on her rack, pulling her bad leg up onto the mattress. She can feel him still looking at her. 

"Kara – " he starts, and she's just too tired to deal with anything, especially the mess between them.

"Can it wait?" 

He hesitates. "Yeah," he says, finally, sounding reluctant.

"Okay," she says, and beats her pillow into shape before finally putting her head down, breathing out in one long exhalation, feeling her back melt into the mattress. 

Lee's still hovering. 

"What?" she says finally, knowing she sounds terse, and he opens his mouth to say something and then shuts it again. 

"Nothing. Sleep well." 

"Yeah. Anytime you want to take me off nights, feel free," she says and drags her curtain shut as he laughs. 

She can still feel his hands on her ankles.

She's so frakked.

*

Lee checks out of the bunkroom swiftly, because it’s clear Kara doesn’t want him anywhere near her at this stage. He’s not one to overstay his welcome, especially under the circumstances. He’s still not sure what happened in there, whether she’s freaked out by him, or there’s something else at play.

He tries to put it out of his mind and works on pilot evals and reports until he’s made a noticeable dent in the pile on his desk, before heading for the deck to do some much-needed work on his Viper. There’s something hypnotic about losing himself in the minutiae of Viper mechanics, solving problems with his hands for a change, keeping his mind focused and his head clear.

That is, until his wrench snaps as he’s trying to pry a particularly stubborn bolt off his undercarriage, and he has to get a replacement. Just as he’s about to walk into the parts locker, Lee hears his name and freezes by the half-open hatch. Hover, definitely, and Kat, he thinks.

“Still working your ass off for Apollo, Hover? He’s never going to forgive you, you know that.”

“Those maintenance shift rosters are a complete clusterfrak with the new patrols. I’ve been sweating my guts on them for the past three days.”

There’s something profoundly satisfying about the weariness in his tone, and Lee smiles grimly. 

“Oh, man, it was worth it though.” 

Kat’s voice sounds a little breathless, and Hover laughs.

“I bet you anything that if that bouncer hadn’t separated them they’d have been frakking up against the wall. Did you see her face?”

“I tell you, Hotdog’s been walking with a boner in his pants ever since,” she says, and they both snicker.

“Helo had it right when he said they were the most spectacularly repressed couple,” Hover adds.

“You know, I always thought the CAG had a thing for Starbuck,” Kat says. “I didn’t realize it was a two-way street.”

“You mean you don’t know about the pool?”

“What pool?”

“The one about when they’re going to stop pretending they don’t want to jump each other’s bones and just get on with it.” 

“You’re shitting me,” she says, and she sounds awed. 

“Nope. Can you help me move that crate?”

Lee takes it as his cue to step away, and he’s stunned. Not at the fact that the bastards bet on his sex life – that’s par for the course on a battlestar – but at the thought that, when it came down to it, what they saw on the tape was as much Starbuck’s lust as his. 

He can’t deny he saw it – gods, her face – and her enthusiasm at the time had embedded itself in his dim memories. But he’d been thinking it was the booze talking, because she’s always joked about it, and he’s generally been too aware of his own want to consider hers. Now he thinks over what happened this morning in the bunkroom and realizes she wasn’t afraid he’d make a pass at her, as he thought. She was afraid she might make a move.

Frak. 

He has no idea what to do with this piece of knowledge – and he’s pretty sure it’s knowledge rather than supposition – as he reruns several scenarios from the past few days through his mind.

He has to find her. 

She’s no longer in the bunkroom and she’s not due on shift for another few hours, so he checks the deck, the rec room and the gym, where Racetrack’s lifting weights. He leaves before she sees him. 

It takes him a few minutes of thinking to realize he should have known all along where she is – if there’s one thing she misses more than anything else, it’s flying. There’s only one place on Galactica where she might get close to the experience. 

*************

 

After three hours of tossing and turning in her rack, and perhaps twenty minutes of actual sleep, Kara gets up and painfully makes her way to the Observation Deck on Level 4. It's deserted, thankfully, and she sits down in the front row of seats with her bad leg stretched out, and pops another couple of painkillers. She wishes Cottle still had morpha to give her but he’s not playing ball. The Fleet stretches out into the darkness against a backdrop of stars, and it's not flying but it's the best she can do with her knee frakked like it is. She takes a deep breath and leans back, tries to relax.

The painkillers – finally – kick in and she's almost dozing off when the hatch clangs open behind her.

"I thought I might find you here." 

She turns her neck as much as she can. Sure enough, Lee's leaning against the hatchway, arms crossed, and godsdamn he looks good framed by the hatch. 

Deep breath.

"Shouldn't you be in your rack?"

"Couldn't sleep," she tells him, not trusting herself to move. She feels dizzy even sitting down – it’s either the tiredness or the pain meds, or the sight of him. She doesn’t want to explore it too far.

Lee closes the hatch behind him, crosses the room and sinks into the seat next to her.

"Bad?" he says, motioning to her knee and she nods before she thinks, then bites her lip, turning to face the front. She’s not looking for pity. 

After a moment, he puts his hand on her forearm. "It'll be okay," he says. "You will fly again." 

She shrugs. "Maybe."

"Cottle said you'd make a complete recovery."

She shrugs again. "It's just taking too long, you know?" 

He squeezes her arm, and then there's silence, and she watches the two Vipers on CAP spiral through the Fleet. The warmth of his hand feels good through her sweatshirt, and she is hyperaware of his physical closeness. 

"Kara," Lee says finally, and she stiffens. "Don't you think we should… talk about what happened?" 

She exhales. "What's there to talk about? It happened years ago, Lee." It comes out more defensive than she means it to, and she takes another deep breath, tries to sound casual and disinterested, tried to sound like Starbuck. She wonders if he can hear the lie in her voice.

"It didn't mean a thing." 

His fingers tighten slightly around her arm. 

“Really?” 

"Really."

His voice sounds tense, but she can’t bring herself to look at him. 

"I don't believe you."

She looks at him, and he’s frowning. 

"Excuse me?" 

“You heard me. I call bullshit.”

Thank the gods she’s not standing, because she probably would have fallen down. This is exactly what she feared – she’s exposed, naked under his gaze. Lee’s looking at her with an indefinable expression, making her squirm in her seat. The drugs and exhaustion combo isn’t helping her here, and she worries she’s going to lose it.

Still, she tries to brazen it out.

“What makes you say that?”

He sighs, and then, very deliberately, he gets up and stands in front of her, one hand on each arm of her chair. 

“This,” he says, and while he doesn’t sounds remotely as self-assured as he ought to be if he's going to lean and kiss her that way, it doesn’t matter; the touch of his lips on hers are making her insides melt, and when the tip of his tongue brushes against her mouth she lets out a whimper and feels the frakker smile. 

Precisely at the point where she decides there’s no point fighting this – it feels too good – the hatch opens again, and Lee pulls away with a start. 

It’s Sharon, and she looks as surprised as they are, but nowhere near as embarrassed, which makes Kara want to hit her. Lee makes a hiccupping noise behind her and when she looks at him she’s stunned to see him laughing. Suddenly she wants to puke. 

As she fumbles to push herself up, he reaches for her and she ignores his hand. 

“Hope you’ve had your fun,” she hisses before limping to the hatch, all her focus now on getting out as soon as possible. She knows she’s being irrational, that there probably isn’t a plot against her; that it’s most likely just her reacting badly to the drugs – after all, she has previous form on that front – but she is too cranky and annoyed for it to register.

“Starbuck, wait!” Sharon calls out as Kara shoves past her, but Kara ignores her and walks away, leaving an awkward silence behind her.

 

******************************

The minute he sees the back of her head outlined against the star-studded vastness of space, Lee feels his heart rate pick up. He may have spent the best part of an hour looking for Kara, but he still hasn’t got a clue what to say to her. What he does know is that he’s had enough of acting like nothing happened. 

When their brief exchange ends once again in the kind of brush-off that signals she’s is retreating behind her walls, he decides to call her bluff.

“I don’t believe it.”

That gets a response.

“Excuse me?” she says, incredulous, and for the briefest moment he gets the urge to shake her. 

“You heard me. I call bullshit.”

“What makes you say that?” She’s doing her best to sound offhand, but he can see she’s nervous, and scared of what he’s going to say.

So instead of telling her, he decides to show her, and moves in on her, crowding her into her seat.

“This,” he murmurs before giving in to the urge that has driven him for the past two days, and kissing her. Her lips part under his willingly, and he presses on with his tongue until she moans into his mouth and he smiles with relief and pure joy. It wasn’t his imagination – she wants this, wants him, as much as he does her. 

When the hatch opens on Boomer, he’s so shocked he jerks back and just stares. The gods are really frakking with them, he thinks fleetingly, and then breaks into nervous laughter, because, frankly, this is getting ridiculous. The look of horror on Kara’s face makes him realize it’s exactly the wrong reaction, but by then it’s too late.

“I hope you’ve had your fun,” is all she says before hobbling away, and he’s so taken aback by her words he stays there like an idiot, long enough to see her shove past Boomer and disappear down the hallway. 

“Frak,” he swears, and takes off after her. This time he’s not letting her get away. But before he gets a chance to catch up, he hears a muffled curse, and the unmistakable clatter of a crutch onto the floor, followed by a scream. 

Boomer’s on his heels as he rounds the corner to find Kara sprawled across the corridor, her face white as chalk. She obviously tripped over a step, and must have landed on her knee if the look of pain on her face means anything.

“Kara, gods, are you okay?” he pants, kneeling by her, and she nods grimly, avoiding his gaze, but doesn’t make a move to get up.

“I’ll call sickbay,” Boomer says immediately, reaching for the nearest phone. 

“Can you sit up?”

Kara is still not looking at him, but she accepts his helping hand and props herself in a more comfortable position against the wall, keeping her bad leg carefully stretched in front of her. 

“Is it just your leg or did you hit anything else?” he persists, even if he can tell she doesn’t want to talk to him.

She shakes her head. “Just the leg,” she says through gritted teeth, but if she’s that pale it must hurt like hell.

Luckily they’re not far off sickbay, and twenty minutes later she’s lying on a curtained-off cot with Cottle poking around her knee and cursing under his breath before lighting another cigarette.

“I thought you had more sense than to play tag in the corridors with your injured pilots,” he mutters at Lee.

“I wasn’t...” Lee starts, but then the intercom interrupts him.

“Senior officers, please report to CIC. Repeat, all senior personnel to CIC by order of the Commander. Pass the word.”

Cottle fixes him with a beady eye. “That’s your cue, Captain.”

Lee sighs and leans over Kara, laying a tentative hand on her good ankle. “I’ll keep in touch with the doctor and I’ll be back, okay?” but she has her eyes closed and is steadfastly ignoring him, so he doesn’t insist.

************************

 

It's a relief when Lee is paged to the CIC, because her head hurts, her knee hurts more and the mix of humiliation and fear is making her stomach churn. She doesn't meet his eyes as he touches her ankle and tells her he'll be back later, doesn't raise her head until she's heard the hatch shut behind him. 

Cottle keeps packing cooling pads around her knee, seemingly oblivious to all the tension that had filled the room. "Well, Thrace," he says, "Do this again, and I'll be billing you."

"You think I did this on purpose?"

"No moving it for three hours," Cottle continues, ignoring her. "We'll get some of the swelling down and then I'll check it again." 

"It'll be okay, though?" Sharon cuts in, and Kara's grateful to her for asking the question she couldn't bring herself to say. 

"She hasn't done any permanent damage, if that's what you're worried about." Kara fights the urge to shrink back into her pillows as Cottle glares at her. "That's why you have that brace on your knee, so idiot pilots like yourself can't undo all my good work. Now I have other, more important people to tend to, so if you'll excuse me… " 

He exits in a cloud of cigarette smoke. 

"Nice to see he's mellowing with age," Sharon says, then sits down on the side of the bed, and puts one hand gently on Kara's arm. "Are you okay?" 

"I'm fine."

"What was going on with you and Lee?" Sharon asks, after a moment. "Come on, you can tell me."

At the mention of his name, heat rushes back to Kara's face, crawling over her skin and the sense memory floods back – the flick of his tongue in her mouth, the way he'd trapped her in her seat, the set of his chin when he'd called her bluff. The way he'd laughed – laughed like it was nothing – when Sharon had opened the hatch, and the swell of nausea makes her catch her breath.

Sharon smirks. "That good?" 

And Kara can't handle it. "What was it, some kind of set-up?" she whispers harshly, flinching as much as she can away from Sharon's hand without moving her knee. "You guys just cooked that up to frak with me?" 

A look of complete confusion crosses Sharon's face. "What are you talking about?"

"Turning up like that. What, did Lee tell you… ", But she can’t finish the sentence, and twists her fingers into the sheets so they won't tremble anymore. 

"No – Kara, I had no idea you might have been– " Sharon breaks off. "Why would you even think that, anyway?" she says, far more slowly. 

Kara shrugs, then scrubs one hand through her hair. "Just leave it." 

"Kara." 

"I need to get some sleep." Her tone is about as abrupt as it's ever been with her friend, and she knows she should feel guilty about that but all she wants to be is alone. 

"Okay," Sharon says, after a pause. She gets up slowly. "But I just want to say one more thing."

Kara exhales, wishing more than ever that she could roll to one side and ignore whatever is about to come out of Sharon's mouth. "What?" 

"Apollo – he would never intentionally hurt you."

Kara can't help the bitter laugh that rips out of her. "You clearly don't know our history." 

"I know enough," Sharon says pointedly. "And I watched him go crazy when you were stuck down on that moon."

Kara swallows. "What's your point?" 

"Just – don't be too hard on him."

"Sharon–" 

The curtains swing shut behind her friend, and Kara drops her head back into the pillows and brings her hands up to cover her face. Three hours. Three hours and there's too much to think about. 

She believes the confusion on Sharon's face when she'd talked of them setting it up, but that leaves her even more in the dark because now she has no frakking idea what Lee's agenda was. She doesn't understand any of it, and she curls her hands into fists and closes her eyes, tries to shake him out of her head. It doesn't help – it's his face he sees, even through the dark creeping haze of the morpha – the quirk of his lips as he teased her; the panic in his eyes when he'd pulled her off the floor; the dark, almost predatory look when he'd leant in and pressed his mouth to hers. Then suddenly, it's the Lee of four years ago leaning in to kiss her, want and need all over his face and she wants to focus on that, it's important but everything's dimming and the world swirls like she's doing rolls in her Viper – and she's finally flying. 

*******************************************  
She wakes to find Cottle touching her knee with incongruously gentle fingers, and tries to scrub the sleep away with the palms of her hands. Everything's too still – the suspended feeling that comes when the Battlestar is quiet, sleeping – and she realizes she's been out of it a while. 

"What time is it?" she says, and he looks at his watch. 

"We're into the late shift. You've been asleep a while. You looked like a wreck, Thrace."

"Thank you," she says dryly. "Tell Apollo to take me off nights." 

"Tell him yourself," Cottle retorts. "That Captain of yours checked in a few times." 

She can't help the way her eyes fly from her knee to his face. She fancies Cottle looks amused, but she puts on her best triad face and tries for casual. "What did you tell him?"

"That you'll be fine. Be careful this time," he orders, leaning her crutches up against her bed. "Now move it. I need this bed back."

She rolls her eyes. "With pleasure, Doc." 

******************************** 

It takes her a long time to make her way back to the bunkroom and she's already made up her mind about what she's going to do by the time she's entered the silent room.

Lee's in his rack, asleep – she can just see his face through the gap, his features slack and relaxed – and he looks just like the boy she used to know at the Academy, before Zak, before the accident, before all the messiness between them. She gives herself five seconds to look at him, and the resolutely turns away, moving across the room to her locker as quietly as possible. 

The tape's still where she left it, under a pile of dirty laundry – even Lee wouldn't be game to go through that – and she pulls it out and tucks it in the waistband of her shorts and covers it with her shirt. She makes it back out of the hatch without anyone stirring - quite an accomplishment, she thinks, and makes her way down the silent hallways. 

The ready room is deserted, of course; everyone not on night shift is in their rack, but she puts the volume on low just in case, and fast-forwards to the part where she and Lee came back in, fire whisky swimming in their bloodstream just a little too much. 

This time, it's not her reaction she's after, it's Lee's. She leans forward, watching as the Lee and Kara onscreen get closer, bodies leaning into one another. She watches the way he doesn't lift his gaze from her – from her eyes, her lips, her breasts – his face open and hungry. She watches the way he goads her, hitting all the buttons he knew would make her give in; the way he is preemptively moving into her, crowding her with his body, angling his head to kiss her, arms already wrapping around her waist. Holding her to him, fingers splayed and pressing against her back. 

Oh, she thinks. Oh. 

And then onscreen they are kissing, and she bites her lip and wishes, wishes she remembered any of this because her lips are burning and she can feel her heart rate picking up and she's so engrossed that she doesn't connect the soft snick of the hatch opening with the fact that someone is in the room for a good few seconds. Then she fumbles at the remote and hits anything, desperate to clear the screen before any more pilots end up with a little bit too much of the Apollo-and-Starbuck back story. 

The screen mercifully goes dark, and she's gearing up to face whoever has just come in, praying they didn't understand whatever it was they saw, when she hears the last voice she'd ever want to recognize in this context. 

"Kara?" Lee sounds incredulous, and Kara wants to sink through the floor and possibly die. "What are you doing?" 

***********************

The fourth time he goes in to see Kara sleeping, Cottle pointedly tells him that if he wakes her, he’ll have to deal with him, and that Starbuck needs as much sleep as she can get, judging by the state she’s in. It triggers a surge of guilt about the nightshifts that only abates once Lee’s gone back to the office and made sure she’s off duty for a few days. 

That in turn means he has to rejig a whole mess of rosters, and by the time he’s done he’s bone-tired and just goes for a quick nap in his rack, promising himself he’ll be up in half an hour to check on her.

He wakes from a restless sleep to the noise of the hatch closing, and immediately checks her rack. It’s still empty, the only one in the room with curtains wide open. Logic dictates that Kara must be the one who just walked out, so he pads out of the room quietly. The corridor outside is clear, but he can hear the distinctive sound of crutches echoing on the metal floor in the distance, and he decides to follow her. This comedy has got to end – especially this crazy notion she has that he somehow set her up. 

When she enters the ready room, he finds himself hesitating. Maybe she’s just looking for privacy, and the worst thing he could do is walk in on her, like he did earlier in the observation room. He still doesn’t know what to say to her, except that he never meant to hurt her; but that there is something between them, and he’s fed up pretending there isn’t.

He remembers the taste of her lips on his, and that clinches it. 

This time he recognizes the tape the minute he walks through the hatch, and the way Kara’s hugging herself, staring at the screen, is almost disconcerting, like she’s scrutinizing it closely. Until she realizes he’s here and turns it off abruptly.

“Kara? What are you doing?” 

She stays silent, refusing to look at him. So he walks across the room until he’s in front of her, and she sighs. She’s leaning against a bulkhead, right up by the screen.

“Lee, will you quit being in my face all the time?” she huffs. 

“I will when you answer me honestly.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“Why don’t you just admit it, Kara? You want to remember."

She snorts.

"You frakking wish."

"Oh, you do," he says, low. She’s looking flushed and embarrassed and he knows it’s unfair to press his advantage, but he can’t postpone this anymore. "You want to know how it felt."

He’s obviously hit a nerve, because she changes tack.

"And what if I do?" she says softly enough that he has to lean closer to hear her. "Don't you want to remember it?"

"Maybe I do already." 

She looks at him, disbelief turning to anger as his words sink in. 

"What? You have got to be kidding me." 

"Kara – "

"That is so unfair!" 

"Unfair?" 

"You remembered it all the whole time? Why didn't you say anything?" 

As if she’d let him even consider that option the morning after.

"No! I… not all of it. Bits and pieces," he says. He can feel his cheeks flushing. "Little bits and pieces," he amends, holding his hands out to placate her. 

"Would those pieces have been the under shirt groping or the serious hickey you looked like you were giving me?"

"Hey, I thought I'd dreamed it!"

She pounces on that. "That was a common theme in your dreams, then?"

No more pretending, he tells himself.

 

"Kara," he says, placing a hand against the bulkhead. "You can't tell me you didn't then. Or haven't since." 

"I," she starts, but now he's got his other hand on her shoulder and he’s touching her neck, which silences her pretty effectively. 

"Kara." 

"You – Lee – what about the regs?"

He shrugs, and drags one fingertip from the hollow beneath her ear down to the curve of her neck and back up. "When you almost didn't make it back, it made me realize some things." 

"Some things?" she gasps, as his fingers settle on her pulse point. Her eyes are wide and she’s looking panicked but also, he’s sure, aroused.

"We don't have the time to wait for what we want." 

"And what do you want?" 

He leans in and kisses her. At first she stiffens but as he slips his hand behind her neck and pulls her closer into him she gives in – sinking into his embrace – her mouth open and welcoming under his. He marvels, again, at how well they do this together.

The kiss is long and slow, almost languorous. He’s waited long enough, he doesn’t want to rush it – he wants to explore the taste of her, the feel of her mouth, the smell of her skin – but at the same time the rush of desire is making him light-headed.

They pull apart for a breath, and they’re both panting. 

“No more pretending,” he says out loud, and her lips curve into a small smile.

“Deal,” she says, grabbing a fistful of tanks and pulling him in for another kiss. 

She’s more demanding now, and he obliges, biting her mouth, sucking in her lower lip while she presses her body against his. He’s mindful of her knee as he crowds her against the bulkhead and rubs his erection against her hip; as his mouth leaves hers and he slowly kisses his way down her neck and the curve of her shoulder, alternating licks and bites. She reacts as she did on the videotape, head flung back, moaning softly, and his cock swells at the sounds.

If anyone interrupts them this time, he'll punch them. 

Weirdly, his body seems to remember more that his brain does, because he gets a couple of strange, sensory memory flashbacks as she arches against him and his teeth sink into her skin. Last time she was saltier, with the tang of booze on her skin, but this is still unmistakably the taste of Kara, and how he managed to spend four years without kissing her again beggars belief. He cradles her head in his hands, fingers tangled in her hair, his mouth closing over hers as if he wanted to swallow her every breath, and her answering moan threatens to make him lose whatever precarious control he has left. 

It's intoxicating, like a drug he hadn't known he was addicted to, and he wants more. So he slips one hand under her tanks, and she shudders. Gods, she's so warm – her skin pliant over taut muscle, the softness of her curves belying the combat-ready fitness underneath – and the fact that he's finding the contrast powerfully erotic probably says a lot about how much he's fantasized about her. 

His fingers are brushing the underside of her breast through her bra, and her breathing is fast and shallow. She doesn't say a word but she pushes against his hand, so he slides it under the bra and teases her nipple, and she makes a mewling sound in her throat that saps his self-control. Frak taking it slow – he wants her now, and he thrusts against her in search of friction, again and again. 

Until Kara sags back against the wall and he slackens his grip and hears her grunt of pain as her knee gives. He could kick himself for being such a frakwit. 

“You okay?” 

Her face is taut, but she manages a smile.

“Yeah. Better than okay, actually. Just – not very stable.”

She’s leaning heavily against him, all her weight off her bad leg, so he slips an arm around her waist and walks her to the row of chairs. 

“This is awkward,” she remarks as she sinks gingerly into one of the armchairs and Lee stands in front of her, unsure of the logistics. He’s damned if he’s going to stop now they have finally begun. 

Her mouth is half-open, her eyes wide and dark, and the pull she exerts on him is irresistible. He drops to his knees and buries his face in her chest, inhaling deeply – the scent of Kara surrounding him – his hands busy under her tanks again, rucking them up until his face is against her skin and he can taste her, kissing her stomach open-mouthed. She’s shaking, and she pushes him away long enough to get rid of the tanks and of her bra, freeing her glorious breasts.

“Gods,” he mumbles before taking a nipple in his mouth, “Gods, Kara…”

He closes his teeth on her, biting her gently, his tongue teasing the erect tip until she moans and he switches to the other breast, greedy. His right hand is working his way back down her body, snaking into the heat between her legs, which radiates through her shorts as he cups her. 

“Frak, Lee,” she swears, bucking against his fingers, and Lee is desperately trying to figure out how they get to the next step, because there is no question that there is a next step, and that after four frakking years of admittedly very drawn-out foreplay, he’s ready for action. 

So’s Kara, clearly, because when he starts tugging her shorts down she raises her hips and shimmies out of everything as quickly as her leg will allow, while he pulls her boots off. She tears at his tanks – desperate to touch as much of him as she can – so he strips, quickly and efficiently, until he’s naked in front of her. 

At which point, Lee stops and takes in the sight of her – naked but for her knee brace, her chest rapidly rising and falling, and every inch of her pale skin spread out for him. Gods, but she is beautiful – with her face and neck flushed with desire, her taut nipples, her slick swollen sex that just begs for his mouth. He dips his head and barely touches her with his tongue and she hisses, her thighs falling apart as much as the constricting chair will allow. Braced on the armrests, he brushes his mouth against her, then deepens the caress, licking her open, the rich taste of her arousal overwhelming his senses; he keeps at it, steady and relentless until she starts trembling and he latches onto her clit with renewed intent.

It takes him less than two minutes and she’s crying out and coming, calling out his name like a litany.

He slumps at her feet while she’s catching her breath, resting his head against her good leg, reveling in her post-orgasmic blessed-out state, until she nudges him and he clambers up on unsteady feet. 

His cock is standing proud, and Kara’s hungry gaze is making him harder by the second. As she reaches out and wraps her hand around him, coaxing him forward, he has to summon all his powers of self-control not to let go immediately, and then multiply them by ten when she leans over and takes the tip of his cock into her mouth, warm tongue swirling in a figure eight over the head, driving him crazy.

She’ll take him over the brink in no time if she continues, and much as he’s fantasized about coming in her mouth over the past years, today – now – he actually wants more. So he resists the temptation to abandon himself, even though the sight of her lips stretched around his cock is mesmerizing, and tangles his hand in her hair, stilling her.

“Please,” he whispers, and she stops.

“I… It’s not… Please?” He knows he sounds desperate, and incoherent, but Kara gets it. 

“Floor?” she suggests, and he nods, pulling her up with his free hand and lowering her gently to the carpet. It’s basic, and not at all ideal, but with her knee he can’t figure any other way of doing this. 

Kara’s leaning back on her elbows, legs splayed, and Lee drops to her level, bracing himself on one hand while he guides himself into her with the other, and gods she’s so hot and wet he slides in to the hilt without a hitch. 

This is the moment he’s been waiting for all his life, it feels like, and certainly since he met Kara Thrace in his first year at the Academy, just before she became his best friend and chief rival and any thoughts of sex had to be sublimated through sim challenges and occasional drunken fights because the alternative was out of the question. 

He tries to go slow – mindful of her knee, and carpet burns, and the probably futile hope that he might be able to hold back long enough to make her come again – but she’s as desperate as he is, hips bucking under his thrusts, and he knows he’s not going to be able to keep this up.

Her breaths are coming in short, shallow gasps and she’s let her head drop, exposing a length of deliciously tempting neck which he mouths and bites with some success as she starts moaning, a long low keening sound that turns the heat up another unbearable notch. 

“Frak, Kara, I can’t… I’m sorry,” he pants, feeling the irresistible pull of orgasm building in his loins, and apparently that’s all she needed to hear, and he feels her starting to clench around him. And then her head snaps back up and she looks straight at him, looking predatory as frak.

“Now,” she whispers, and he comes, gratefully. 

*************

Kara's pretty sure that the ready-room carpet has stripped skin from some of the more tender parts of her body, and her knee is aching like a bitch, but Lee's face is still pressed into her neck and most of her feels heavy and liquid and more relaxed than she has been since the end of the world, so she decides any physical discomfort has been well and truly worth it.

She runs one hand through his hair, and Lee sighs, his mouth still touching her skin and even two orgasms later, it sends a little tremor of heat through her. It's ridiculous, the way Lee Adama's body already owns hers.

"Where do we go from here?" she says finally, because it's all good and well to have frakked on the floor but there's a battlestar outside the hatch and he's the CAG and not all the regulations across the Fleet are allowed to be broken. Not to mention all the other excellent reasons why this was really not a good idea.

"Hmm?" 

She pokes at his shoulder. "Lee. Wake up."

He lifts his head at that, and gives her the dopiest, most sated smile she's ever seen. It's a look she likes on him. 

"What?"

"I asked you a question."

"You honestly expect me to concentrate when you look like this?" 

She looks down at where they're still pressed together, skin meeting skin and concedes that he might, in fact, have a point – but she hadn't really expected to be having this conversation while naked. She hadn't expected to be in this position at all. She'd always figured that to have one Adama interested in her was more than she deserved; to have two was impossible, and to want it was greedy. 

The gods had never been particularly kind to her before. 

It's enough to kill her mood a little, and she shrugs. Lee pushes himself up on one elbow, and rests his palm against her cheek. "We go one day at a time," he says finally. 

"One day at a time?" 

"Yeah," he says. 

The future is too hard to imagine; any one of an infinite list of possible disasters could occur at any moment. But the next twenty-four hours don't seem too hard a prospect, not when he's looking at her in a way that makes her want to melt. 

"Okay," she says. 

She feels his exhale all through her body, and then he's kissing her like she's his, and maybe, just maybe, she could be okay with that.

 

***************************

CODA: 

Meg fidgets with her side arm. She’s not supposed to be on the Astral Queen at all – Rover caught a stomach bug from Nikon, who passed it to Furry, and then half the Raptor pilots went down with it, and by some miracle she’d escaped it. Just her luck – the one time her immune system was working, and the one time she wish she’d gone down with the stupid thing. Starbuck’s voice had come over the wireless twenty minutes ago and Apollo hasn’t stopped pacing up and down the corridor. Meg’s getting dizzy just watching him. She’s also pretty sure that if Starbuck doesn’t arrive soon, Apollo may shoot something just out of sheer frustration, and she'd rather that wasn't her, so she's trying to be as invisible as possible. 

Meg thinks longingly of her bunk on Galactica, and tries to look the other way as Apollo sends another glowering stare at his watch. 

It’s a very long three minutes until the Heavy Raider docks, and Starbuck appears around the corner, looking pale – blue rings like bruises under her eyes – but by then Apollo is almost running towards her and Starbuck’s face lights up like a supernova. 

Meg watches as Apollo pulls Starbuck into his arms so tightly that they lose their balance, rocking together as they find their feet. She thinks it might be funny if she couldn’t see the look on Apollo’s face, fierce relief and joy and something deeper that makes her throat ache just a bit, makes her feel awkward, as if she’s intruding on something clearly so personal.

She does smile, though, when Apollo moves back just enough to kiss Starbuck, who flinches away like their whole relationship is a secret; like the whole of Galactica hasn’t worked out already that something more than Flight Instructor and CAG meetings go on in Apollo’s office. Meg supposes that they’ve tried to be subtle; it’s just not a gift either of them have, and the pilots are a perceptive group. 

Then Starbuck seems to get over her reservations, because she hooks one hand around the back of Apollo’s neck and really kisses him - no mistaking her intent this time, and the President raises her eyebrows a little, and Meg looks at her shoes and feels her cheeks growing warm, because is it really necessary they kiss like that with other people around? 

“Since when did that happen?” 

The voice beside her is so startling that Meg almost stumbles as she turns around. Helo’s standing next to her, staring at Starbuck and Apollo like they’ve grown three heads each. His clothes are dirty and he’s thinner than she remembers, but he’s alive and real and it’s so unexpected that she completely loses the ability to talk for a moment. 

“A while,” she gets out finally. 

He whistles. “I thought they’d never get it together. What happened?”

It’s the end of the world, he’s been stranded for months, and the first thing he wants to know is the gossip. Typical Helo, Meg thinks, as Starbuck and Apollo finally come up for air and seem content to stand with their foreheads pressed together for a while. 

Helo seems to be expecting an answer, but Meg doesn’t really know what to say. “There was a tape?” she offers finally. 

“A tape?” Helo says, and then he grins, and Meg knows he remembers. “You’ll have to tell me about it.”

Sharon appears behind him, and Meg is about to greet her when she realizes that Sharon’s dead, so this has to be just another frakking Cylon copy, and things stop making sense as Apollo seems to decide he does want to shoot something after all and all hell breaks loose. There isn't much time for chatting after that.

***************************

Coming back to Galactica – after the months on Caprica and all the crazy shit on Kobol – is a real homecoming for Helo, apart from the bit where Sharon gets dragged off to the brig without a second thought. He knows he has to be thankful it’s not the airlock, but it makes him bitter all the same, as do some of the looks he gets from his fellow pilots.

Never mind. He’s home, and Starbuck has his back, and Sharon’s alive – for now – and carrying his baby. He can deal with all the rest. 

He gets his old bunk back, and what possessions of his are still around – surprisingly, most of his stash of lollipops has survived, and some socks and underwear, freshly laundered, are back in his locker by the evening of his arrival. Somebody must have passed the word.

One thing, though, is missing, and he has a pretty clear idea of where he might find it, but he figures he’ll have to be stealth.

He corners Meg a couple of days later, after the pilots’ briefing, because he wants to make sure he’s got it right.

“Hey, Racetrack,” he calls, and she smiles at him.

“Can’t believe how much I’ve missed you, you big goof.”

“Yeah? I can’t believe how much I missed the old rustbucket. And you, of course.”

She cuffs him affectionately on the shoulder and he grabs her wrist and lowers his voice.

“I did want to ask you something though. About…” he nods to the front of the ready room, where Apollo and Starbuck are poring over the latest grid, amending the daily rota with markers.

“Like I told you, there was a tape…”

“Racetrack, I can’t believe you went through my private stuff,” he says with mock outrage.

“Cut the crap, Agathon. You were dead.”

“I was not!”

“You know what I mean. Anyhow, we were watching the tape…”

“Who’s we?” he interrupts.

“Me, Hotdog, Kat, Hover… and Sharon. I mean, Boomer.” She grimaces.

“Anyone else know about it?”

“The tape? I don’t think so. But those two aren’t as below the radar as they think they are.”

“They think they’re below the radar?” He grins, and they both start laughing. 

“Apparently. Even if we had to split the pot six ways because of the number of people who called it.”

“Whoa – there was a pool?”

“Don’t get excited – socks and that kind of stuff. Some chocolate.”

Helo chews on his lower lip for a moment, then grabs her by the arm and walks down the hallway. 

“Tell me more about the tape – how did it go from a bunch of pilots watching it to this?” He jerks his thumb behind him. 

“They walked in on us watching them,” Racetrack mumbles, embarrassed, and Helo cracks up.

“For real? Oh, I knew that tape would come in handy some day. I wish I’d been there.”

She looks at him, impish. 

“You are now.”

He looks at her for a while, silent, and then nods. 

“You’re right. Time I got my stuff back. After all, they owe me. If it wasn’t for that tape…”

Meg nods.

“Exactly.”

 

**************************

The evening’s triad game is in full flow when Helo sneaks out of the rec room (where, let’s face it, some people are glad to see the back of him) with a last glance at Starbuck, crowing as she slaps her hand on the table and rakes in the winnings. Judging by the piles of cubits, socks and soap in evidence, the game has at least an hour to go. Perfect. And the CAG is on CAP. 

The senior pilots’ bunkroom is empty, and it doesn’t take him long to go through Apollo and Starbuck’s racks, with no joy. Next up are the lockers – and Helo prides himself on his lockpick skills. Actually, he’s surprised Starbuck bothers to lock hers. She didn’t use to – no one in their right mind would dare steal her stuff – which makes him think he’s on the right track.

Under a pile of dirty laundry - nice try, ‘Buck – wrapped in a towel, he finally finds the tape, and pulls it out with a subdued whoop. No doubt about it, this is the piece of solid gold history he’s been carting around with him for the past four years, like a comfort blanket.

“Anything I can help you with, Agathon?”

Helo freezes. 

“I bet Starbuck would be delighted to find you digging around her stuff,” Apollo continues, his tone bone-dry.

“Well, sir, strictly speaking, this is my stuff. Just a case of misplaced belongings, I’m sure.”

Apollo is looking as stern as he knows how, but Helo knows him well enough to see beneath the mask. Besides, embarrassment or not, it’s his tape, and he’s damned if he’s going to surrender just because the CAG is staring him down. 

The silence stretches between them.

“You know,” Apollo says conversationally, “I could just order you to hand me the tape.”

“You could.”

“Or,” Apollo continues, “I could just take it from you.”

Helo grins. 

“Or you could try that, yes.”

“For frak’s sake, Helo, what are you going to do with this… thing.”

“I was thinking of watching it, for old times’ sake.”

Apollo raises an eyebrow, and Helo can read the question.

“On my own. Although Racetrack might complain.”

“Frak Racetrack,” Apollo says vehemently.

“I’m already taken, thanks. But I’ll give it a thought.”

“Give what a thought?” a familiar voice calls through the hatch and, frak, Starbuck comes striding in. It doesn’t take her long to figure out what’s been happening, and Helo starts feeling a little nervous. After all, last time they thought he had the tape on him, the threat of violence was in the air. 

“Helo. Been digging in my locker?”

“Just returning the favor. Apparently something of mine was… found. I’m taking it back. Seeing as I am not actually dead.”

There’s a dangerous glint in her eyes as she comes into the room and shuts the hatch behind her, and Helo is starting to believe that the two of them might just be crazy enough to try and beat him up to get that damn tape. Which – really – isn’t his idea of fun. 

“Whoa, kids, come on,” he says, raising his hands, still holding the tape. “After all, I’ve had this for a long time, and if I hadn’t gone AWOL on Caprica, you still wouldn’t be the wiser.”

Apollo and Starbuck exchange a brief glance and Helo can see he’s hitting home.

“And, if I may add, you should really thank me.”

This time, he’s got them – Starbuck looks mortified and Apollo’s neck reddens. 

She clears her throat.

“I don’t know what…”

“Oh please, Starbuck, I saw you two on the Astral Queen. And I hate to break it to you, but the fact that you’re knocking boots is kind of common knowledge aboard this ship. Even if the tape isn’t, which I gather is still the case.”

Apollo is blushing furiously now, and Helo wants to laugh. 

“Come on, Captain, did you really think you could keep a secret here? I’ve only been back a couple of days and I already know the pool was…”

“Okay, Helo. Enough.” 

“There’s a pool?” Starbuck says, and she turns to look at Apollo, who grimaces.

“Apparently there was.”

“And you knew about it?”

Apollo shrugs. “Kind of. Stuff I overheard. I didn’t know it had been claimed, though.”

“When you two lovebirds are done, let me know,” Helo says, stretching lazily against the locker, and he ducks when Starbuck throws a half-hearted punch at him. 

“Come on, ‘Buck. Seriously? You owe me big time, if the look on either of your faces is worth anything.” 

“Shut it, Helo,” she growls, but her heart isn’t in it. 

He leans over and looks her in the eye. “Tell me you’d have shacked up anyhow if you hadn’t found the tape, and it’s yours.”

“We…” she tails off and shakes her head. “Frak you, Agathon.”

Helo beams. “See? You guys kept it going for years at the Academy – if it hadn’t been for this,” he says, waving the tape, “you’d still be eyefrakking each other and taking it out on the rest of the crew.”

The look of defeat on their faces is like a balm to his soul, not least because he knows they agree with him and – judging by their body language – they’re happier than he’s seen them in a long time, so he’s not feeling sorry for them. At all. Neither of them makes a move to stop him as he walks past them on his way out.

“I promise I’ll keep it to myself,” he says as he steps out. “And if you’re good, I’ll let you watch it sometimes,” he adds, under his breath, but they’ve already slammed the hatch on him and the wheel is spinning shut. 

Helo smiles as he makes his way back to the rec room, the tape tucked into his flightsuit. There will be time enough to watch it later. Right now, it feels good to know that his matchmaking skills have been rewarded at last.

FIN


End file.
